Please Say You'll Stay, Sandy

Blog Post: Week of October 22nd
Photo # 2

Hurricane Sandy is abrewin' and the birds can tell. Nothing special, old lens, grainy photo, but I thought it worthwhile to post.

Sandy came at just the right time! I was close to panicking about how much work that needed to be finished. Which brings me to the topic of this blog post- public education in Maryland and the United States as a whole.

Firstly, there are these standards and expectations that put a mental and emotional strain on students. This is understandable, of course, the drive that pushes us students forward in our educational careers is, after all, the stress. But to add onto the stress of needing to finish schoolwork to have acceptable grades in the present, there is a not-so-unspoken idea that students need to go to college, need to know exactly what they want to do with their lives as they enter the eleventh grade if they want to have an acceptable life in the future.

I know that my own parents remind me every single day that I need to get exceptional grades, I need to get a scholarship, I need to get into a great college, and I need to find a career that pays enough to somehow pay for their retirement. A lot to put onto a 15 year old girl's shoulders, I think.

Secondly, and probably more statistically backed, and I think that teachers can agree with me on this one, standardized tests and Bush's No Child Left Behind Act create a deathly circuit. The tests implemented in schools make for an unhealthy impact on students' understand of what's really important. It links students' intelligence to the inaccurate results of the test. It then links this false representation of the students' intelligence to the quality of the teachers. The circuit ends and restarts with a decision that could make or break a school- how much federal funding the school will get based on the unreliable, untrue tests scores.

Now, we all know what this leads to- teachers teaching to the test, students cheating on the test, etc. To me, this just leads to a lack of motivation, and overall negative impacts on the schooling system. I'm in no way blaming my parents, the teachers or the school for any sort of petty disinterest I feel regarding school. No, I am making my commentary on what I think is leading to the unheard of drop out rates. I mean, 1 million students drop out every year, 6,000 students every day, and one student every 26 seconds. There's got to be a reason, right?

The first thing that most adults seem to tell me is to find a career that I am in interested in, something that I will enjoy doing every day, hence the drive that pushes us students forward in our educational careers should be motivation and excitement to follow a certain path. Yet, recently, I find that the nature of the education system is rushing me to pick a path before I can develop interest in one. I shouldn't want to go to college simply because of the threatened imminent failure and poverty that will come to those who choose not to. Furthermore, my intelligence shouldn't be scored based on tests that really show no evidence of such.

Please don't take this blogpost as an uneducated little girl complaining about the school system. My mother is a teacher and I simply thought that it would be healthy for me to let out my own opinion on my education seeing as I hear about my mom's opinion night and day. I obviously don't know everything about public education in the United States, but I know that the path that the government is taken now can't be the best direction for the future.